These are the kinds of days fans pick up a program and become draft experts, it has to be noted some teams conduct drafts even without a gm as we saw with Florida and last season with Tampa or in the past with Montreal.

Garth Snow has to trust the people he hired also to balance out the clubs long-term needs. Over the years many New York Islander fans (myself included) have placed so much importance in the general manager's role with regard to the draft (and everything regarding a team) we all forget this comes down to the scouts and in this case assistant gm Ryan Jankowski and the people on the staff world-wide.

They have meetings make a draft board of their own and decide who they want and when they can get that player. In many cases I have read the gm has less impact than the head scout. General managers do not live on the road in Europe during the NHL season visiting prospects, they send reps to scout games and sometimes interview players.

The gm usually is checking in on his picks already selected, along with going to the WJC and working with his NHL team.

Which lead us to this weekend.

For years we read the New York Islanders had to get some prospects to backup Rick DiPietro. They had Stefan Ridderwall, Kevin Poulin and Jase Weslosky along with Peter Mannino and Nate Lawson in Bridgeport but apparently this was the day Ryan Jankowski and the scouts decided to get serious with their two selections who ranked in the top five for European goaltenders.

Was it the right move not to add more size at forward/center/defense? More than a fair question considering these were not franchise prospects and a player like Ferraro was grabbed immediately along with some other first rounders who dropped but the Isles have neglected the goaltending for a long time in terms of top level players, this was a weak goaltending draft.

And yes Figren, Marcinko, Joensuu, Smith and a few others have to get some kind of chance, you remember them, the other draft prospects? (Smith was UFA, like Bentivoglio and Hennigar)

You also have to look at last summer's draft where they had so many picks and so many propsects under contract Max Gratchev could not be signed.

Do I absolutely think that means DiPietro cannot play? Absolutely not but it does mean they wanted some serious potential backups in their system.

I'm sure on paper no one among fans is doing cartwheels but on day one they got the player they had to get. Is deHaan the right pick and did the Isles overpay in picks to trade for him? There are indications he could be and they did but that remains to be seen for years.

Would he have lasted to 26th or even 16th? Obviously Jankowski did not think so.

Not much else today if anything and it will take years on some of these other players but Isles did not get bigger or tougher in a draft they had a lot of picks to address some holes. Isles constant trading did not help the crawl as they got back some picks they had earlier but I think we got it right in the end. Sidebar has draft section and Prospect Blog Page has full 2009 Draft section already.

Btw, If I read one more absurd article the Islanders can have a Pittsburgh like turnaround.......

Who writes this stuff?

Please wake up out there, Pittsburgh won a league-wide lottery after a lockout for a franchise player after being brutal for years (same lottery the Isles could have won just as easily) and it's fair to write without Crosby the team that was in tenth place this year (or where the Isles were last year around the trade deadline) would have missed the playoffs and have stayed on the outside to this day. Pittsburgh's so-called rebuilding also included anything but going with prospects after a ton of veterans signed post lockout (Crosby lottery) who fell on their faces with LeClaire, Recchi, Palffy and Mario Lemieux among others.

Imagine the reaction if Snow signed two or three Mike Knuble's next week to go with Doug Weight?

Whatever the Isles do unless they sign a ton of veterans, it will be nothing like how Pittsburgh got where they are which included 1/3 of their forwards in game seven as former New York Islanders.

That mostly does it for the written blogs again, whatever happens from here (if anything) we will go back to audio format.

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